Sound system occasionally replaces audio with hideous high pitch beeps

Asked by Collin Stocks

I have not been able to reproduce this consistently, but I plan to add more information to this question when I do.

Sometimes when I have switched songs in a music player several times in a row (it does not matter which music player -- affects Rhythmbox, mplayer, flash, ...), or if multiple sources are trying to play audio at once, the audio system replaces all the audio with high pitch beeps.

This affects every audio application, including the window manager bell, applications which use PyAudio, Audacity, totem, mplayer, flash, gstreamer, ...

This seems to be some sort of glitch state, because the easiest way to fix it is to turn off all the audio sources and repeatedly mute and unmute the audio until it starts working correctly again.

I have done a search, but I can't find anything useful. Most of the search results either have to do with particular applications, or with the pc system beep, which has nothing to do with this problem.

Does anyone have any idea what might cause this? Or what I might do to go about reproducing the bug consistently?

System information:
Ubuntu 11.04
Kernel Linux 2.6.38-13-generic
GNOME 2.32.1

I can't recall at the moment what commands I should issue to give more system information and I have to go write an essay, so please ask me for more information.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Open
For:
PulseAudio Edit question
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Revision history for this message
Collin Stocks (collinstocks) said :
#1

http://oblivion.cc/shared/horrible.wav

This is what it sounds like. I am playing classical music.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said :
#2

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Revision history for this message
Collin Stocks (collinstocks) said :
#3

The problem usually appears to occur when playing from two audio sources at once. The problem can always be fixed by turning off all the audio sources and then starting them again, but this is fairly inconvenient.

Revision history for this message
Collin Stocks (collinstocks) said :
#4

https://launchpadlibrarian.net/95402149/horrible.wav

This is what it sounds like. I am playing classical music.

I have removed the file from my website, so here is a replacement.

Revision history for this message
Lucas Henderson (lucashenderson) said :
#5

I have this exact problem as well, with that exact same sound.

No idea if it's relevant, but going by lspci, my audio chipset is"Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller"

Revision history for this message
William Byrd (williamwill) said (last edit ):
#10

thanks

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